Scurvy, an exhibition at Cape Town’s Castle, penetrates=20 the heart of that archetypal symbol of colonial=20 authority, writes NEVILLE DUBOW
INTERESTING things are happening in the Cape Town=20 Castle. Currently it is the site of an outbreak of=20 Scurvy. Its pathology is concerned not so much with=20 tenderness of the gums, but a subcutaneous eruption of=20 another kind.
Scurvy is the name of an exhibition by the self-styled=20 Secret Seven in collaboration with the William Fehr=20 Collection at the Castle, whose curators deserve credit=20 for allowing this stretching of the military mind-set.=20 The Secret Seven? What does this conjure up — a visual=20 equivalent of the Dead Poets’ Society? High jinks and=20 iconoclasm behind the castle walls? Well, that’s partly=20 so, but there’s more to it than that.
The seven (Wayne Barker, Kevin Brand, Barend de Wet,=20 Andrew Putter, Kate Gottgens, Lisa Brice, Brett Murray)=20 were all Michaelis students in the 1980s — the so- called protest decade — when lines of difference=20 between ”them” and ”us” (state and opposition) were=20 clearly defined. And when an art school was the one=20 place that provided a supportive environment to allow=20 you to line the enemy up in your sights and let rip.
It is one thing to do that within the protectiveness of=20 an art school womb. It is something else to get out=20 into the world and continue rocking the boat. Which is=20 more or less what all of them went on to do. Though=20 they share no common style, a gutsy irreverence linked=20 them then, and continues to do so now. As a group show,=20 Scurvy contains more spunk, wit and visual energy than=20 any comparable show I can think of in a long time. On=20 its own terms it makes vast tracts of the Johannesburg=20 Biennale look tame. In effect it takes off where the=20 Biennale Laager ended. That circle of containers,=20 conjured together by Barker, was, of course, on the=20 fringe of Newtown. This show penetrates the heart of=20 Cape Town’s Old Town, its archetypal symbol of colonial=20 authority, the Castle itself.
Locating the show in the Castle carries with it a=20 double-edged irony. The one edge is more obvious than=20 the other. Here is the bastion of power penetrated by=20 an artful Trojan horse out of which seven iconoclasts=20 have spilled to question and lampoon the whole=20 colonising process, its hierarchies, its stereotypes,=20 its icons, its sacred cows. Here is the guardian of=20 that very vegetable garden that was meant to provide=20 the means of combating scurvy (the debilitating disease=20 which, among other things, impeded maritime empire=20 building) — breached from within.
The other edge cuts more subtly, perhaps even more=20 sharply. It brings home the paradox of site-specific=20 art installations of this kind. The signals coming from=20 the works question the value system symbolised by the=20 Castle as institutional guardian. Yet were these works=20 to be seen anywhere else, in a commercial gallery, say,=20 they would lose much of their point, and a lot of their=20
The Castle has provided some superb spaces which the=20 artists have been quick to exploit. Thus the paradox.=20 The material culture which the Castle represents, in=20 all its spare, military elegance, gives resonance to=20 the very work which seeks to undermine the value system=20 that caused the Castle to be built in the first place.
This is not to say that the Castle space neutralises=20 the barbs in the work; rather does it set up a kind of=20 creative tension. Thus seeing Barker’s huge floor=20 installation in one of the earliest sections of the=20 complex (B Block — originally a church and restored in=20 the 1840s as the British Officers’ Mess) gives the=20 experience a certain frisson that it would not have had=20 in a neutral setting. Barker calls his piece World; it=20 is nothing less than a giant world map with the=20 continents defined by bottles, the Cape by a neon VOC=20 sign, and — this is the point — the oceans by surplus=20 army uniforms. In its context the uniform metaphor=20
You reach the map by way of an antechamber containing=20 Barend de Wet’s resin-cast of himself in the nude –=20 Sculpture of the Artist as a Sculpture. It is the same=20 one that we saw at the Biennale in its shipping=20 container. Here it stands, heralding the scurvy theme,=20 set in a sea of oranges. It has a different kind of=20 impact here, an installational Jonah Lomu stopper,=20 where the oranges perform the role of spiked naartjies.
Immediately below this, in the basement, is the most=20 affecting installation of the show, Kevin Brand’s Boys.=20 This consists of 17 identical papier m%che figures,=20 life-size, but volumetrically stylised, laid on wooden=20 racks or propped up against the walls. They look like=20 victims of a bomb blast, excavated from the ruins of=20 some undetermined disaster. Their number may refer to=20 the 17 Heeren who ran the Company, but their provenance=20 seems linked to another kind of running — an earlier=20 piece by Brand called Nineteen Boys Running; the effect=20 of Brand’s installation is stunning in its economy of=20 means and immediacy of impact.
On an upper level Lisa Brice and Kate Gottgens take on=20 the notion of castle as metaphor. Gottgens — who has,=20 since her student days, knowingly walked the thin edge=20 of kitsch as kitsch and kitsch as parody — presents,=20 in her words, ”visions of castles using the language of=20 the dispossessed”.
Brice takes her texts from the Yellow Pages where=20 suburban paranoia is catered for by the burglar-bar=20 industry — ”Make your home your castle …”, ”Your=20 home is your castle … protect it”. Her objects probe=20 domestic angst as one would an aching tooth –=20 embroidered cushions with flying squad telephone=20 numbers, burglar bars that spell, depending on whether=20 you are inside or out, ”Relax” or Voetsak”.
Andrew Putter, in a darkened room, focuses on the=20 homoerotic gaze and the ”secret (sometimes dangerous)=20 ways we’ve found to take our sexual pleasure in a=20 homophobic society”. His presentation centres around=20 hidden inserts of male pin-ups in hollowed books. We’re=20 in the Castle, remember. When I visited the show, there=20 were indications that official homophobia was beginning=20 to surface. But tolerance seems to have prevailed. The=20 artist, disarmingly, claims to find ambient army=20 uniforms sexy.
Finally, Brett Murray, an accomplished ironist, employs=20 cross-cultural references (pink panthers in perspex=20 with Zulu shields) towards an understanding of shifts=20 in power and celebrations of change.
Shifts in power. This is where the problematics of the=20 Secret Seven’s Scurvy really come into focus. Here we=20 have a group of gifted artists who were schooled in the=20 1980s when the enemy was clearly identifiable. It=20 hardly needs to be spelled out that the situation in=20 the mid-1990s, when even the president — especially=20 the president — wears a Springbok rugby cap, has=20 somewhat changed. Symbols acquire different meanings.=20 What remain of the sacred cows of apartheid South=20 Africa have become instead the Aunt Sallies, or Oom=20 Sarels, nicely lined up in the post-colonial shooting=20 gallery. Sitting ducks, to mix the metaphor.
In these terms, then, the Scurvy show may be seen as a=20 kind of celebratory shoot. Fine and good. This is a=20 unique moment when we can join in the deflation of the=20 cows, the celebration of the toppling of the icons of=20 past authority. But that does not mean there are not=20 other targets that will demand the attention of=20 socially critical artists in the politically correct=20 new South Africa, or that the targets are going to=20 remain, as they are now, conveniently static.
I have the feeling the Secret Seven know this, and will=20 keep their critical vision sharp, their weapons primed,=20 and their powder dry.